


Don't Cry Over Spilled Milk

by Switch_Statement



Category: Sword Art Online (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Bad Cooking, Communication Failure, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Domestic Fluff, Gen, Video Game Mechanics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:34:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28765653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Switch_Statement/pseuds/Switch_Statement
Summary: Kirito finds out the hard way that skills on the front lines do not translate to the kitchen.  Set during Aincrad arc, slight AU.
Relationships: Kirigaya Kazuto | Kirito/Yuuki Asuna | Asuna
Kudos: 12





	Don't Cry Over Spilled Milk

After his first year trapped in Sword Art Online, Kirito thought that he could handle anything thrown his way. He hadn't expected to be proven wrong anytime soon, but that notion was shattered as soon as he read the note Asuna had left him one sunny afternoon.

_Kirito, Commander Heathcliff requested I attend a meeting with the Divine Dragon Alliance today. Something about clearing the new dungeon together, if I remember correctly. I know cooking isn't your specialty, but can you try to throw something together for when I get back? There's some recipes on the counter for you to follow and all the ingredients you need are in the cabinets. (Don't worry, I checked, they came out of my inventory!)_

_Good luck, and see you soon._

_-Asuna_

Kirito allowed himself a brief "Aw, that's cute," before snatching the piece of paper he'd ignored when he first came in. The first thing he noticed was that Asuna had been truthful in her letter- this was three recipes at least, and that was just on the front. When he turned the paper over, another four recipes made themselves clear to him.

"Okay, I know she has high expectations of me, but does she seriously expect me to make this all at once?" He said this as loudly as possible, like he'd expect Asuna to somehow hear him and feel sorry for the weight she'd dumped on his shoulders. If he wanted to make sure it got to her, he probably could have sent a message, but the alerts for receiving those were loud and he didn't want to interrupt her meeting- he didn't need Asuna already angry when she got home.

Not quite sure which order he wanted to make the recipes in, he decided to just start with the top recipe on the page- some kind of vegetable soup- and work his way through from there. Pulling out all the things he needed (cooking-safe, metal spoon for stirring, assorted vegetables, something called chicken stock that he barely even knew existed, and salt), he got everything into position as a notification popped into his vision.

_Are you sure this is what you want to make?_

_Vegetable Soup, Two Servings_

Kirito tapped "Yes," and then the world vanished around him.

"Wait," he said. "What the…"

" _Welcome to the Cooking Challenge,"_ a calm female voice (definitely not Asuna's), told Kirito. _"You have chosen to make 'Vegetable Soup, Two Servings.' This meal will be made in three stages. Stage One will begin in 15 seconds."_

"Well, Asuna never told me I'd have to go through this," Kirito said to himself. He swore cooking hadn't been like this when he'd tried it in the beta test. He could have just misremembered it after all this time, but as with the now-infamous 1st-Floor Boss' switch to a nōdachi instead of a talwar, Kayaba Akihiko simply could have changed it between then and the game's actual release. Either way, Kirito didn't know, and he didn't have much time to think about the possibilities.

" _Stage One, Assembly,"_ the voice from before told him. _"Start!"_

Each of the ingredients that needed to be cut appeared in front of him, with a prompt telling him to cut the ingredients among the glowing lines with "the proper amount of force."

Kirito began muttering under his breath. "Could this be any more vague? What, did they expect people to figure out what it was through trial and error or something?"

Maybe the instructions got more detailed as your cooking skill got higher. That was the only explanation he had. If he didn't humiliate himself here, he'd probably ask Asuna later.

The beginning was nothing short of awful. Used to cutting through monsters and not mere vegetables, Kirito used _way_ too much force on the first couple of ingredients and almost pulverized them. He got a little better in that aspect towards the end, even if it came at the cost of all the pieces being lopsided.

Then came a simple reaction minigame where he had to stop pouring the chicken stock into the bowl when it got to a line. This one went much better- his finished bowl wasn't perfect, but it looked like the soup could be salvaged.

After a similar minigame with the salt, the vegetables automatically entered the bowl, and the guiding voice returned once more. _"Stage Two, Cooking. Start!"_

Another prompt told Kirito that his goal was to keep the temperature (represented by a blue dot) inside the green zone on a conveniently-placed thermometer, which would change as time went on. He'd also have to watch how long he was heating the stuff- the soup only needed about ten minutes.

The first few minutes went by without much of a problem- at the beginning, the green zone was fairly generous, allowing Kirito to relax a little, stirring absentmindedly as he did. He knew the soup was going to be far from perfect, but hey, it would at least be better than nothing.

With this part of the game seemingly out of the way, Kirito allowed his mind to wander a little, thinking about what he and Asuna would do after this dinner was done. Maybe they'd go XP grinding in the fields outside Asuna's house. They could even just sit around and talk. Either way, it'd probably be enjoyable, no matter what.

However, his train of thought was derailed by a shrill, piercing beep. Kirito jolted out of his trance-like state and glanced at the thermometer. As soon as he saw it, he began to curse under his breath- not only had the green zone shrunk significantly, meaning the temperature was now too high, but based on the burning smell he was now being assaulted with, he had definitely left it on the stove for too long.

Snatching the bowl off the stove, he looked at the soup, now a mess of overcooked and scalded vegetables floating in a liquid that gave off a deeply disturbing smell.

The voice that had been giving him instructions didn't seem bothered. It merely told him, _"Stage Three, Presentation,"_ followed by, _"Start!"_

One last prompt appeared, telling him to add spices as he saw fit, as well as pour the stuff into two bowls for consumption. Kirito skipped the spices entirely, not wanting to waste any more of Asuna's ingredients on something as hopeless as this. At the very least, he managed to make the two bowls roughly equal, so each of them would be subject to about the same amount of the sludge.

The voice told him, _"Cooking Challenge complete! Bon appetit!"_

Unfortunately for him, "Bon appetit" was the last thing Asuna would say looking at the burnt concoction masquerading as vegetable soup. She'd probably laugh at him. That is, if she didn't throw up first. (Kirito wasn't sure such an act was possible in Sword Art Online, but he didn't fancy finding out the hard way, either.)

Kirito began to panic a little. He'd already bombed the first dish, and he still had six more to go. Unless he went into Selmburg to buy more supplies, the chance he'd be able to try again while still having enough to make everything else was slim to none, and Asuna's meeting wasn't going to last forever. His only hope was to make everything else so damn perfect that Asuna would brush aside the awful soup as nothing more than a fluke.

Since he'd already proven himself incompetent at the cooking minigame (at least, assuming the others were similar), he decided to try and call in a helper. Obviously, Asuna was out of the question, as was anyone in her guild. Scrolling through his friends' list, he began ruling out just about everyone else- Lisbeth and Agil had in-game jobs to attend to; Yolko and Caynz had joined a new guild that was on the front lines; Schmitt, as part of the Divine Dragon Alliance, was probably on the front lines as well; Silica and her new guild were grinding XP to try and join the frontliners for the next boss.

Then he came to the last name on his friends' list. He hadn't sent Kirito any messages recently, but while his guild also fought on the front lines, he'd recently heard from Argo that they'd been given a week of reprieve a few days ago following a nasty experience with the 71st-Floor Boss. (It had launched an area-of-effect poison attack that nearly killed everyone in the guild, including whom he was messaging.)

Kirito wasn't sure if he'd even answer, but it was the best shot he had. Thus, he pulled up the messaging function and began typing.

* * *

Fuurinkazan's members were finishing off a round of XP grinding when Klein received Kirito's message.

While they had been given a week off by the loose alliance of guilds that made up the frontliners, that didn't mean they wanted to fall behind. Thus, they'd been fighting the monsters that periodically spawned in an open meadow on the 60th Floor to get some easy XP and stave off boredom. It wasn't much, but at least it was something.

When Klein got the message, he didn't tell anybody at first, not even sure who it was from until he read its contents. As soon as he did, though, he had to stifle a laugh.

_Hey, Klein, it's me again. Asuna wants me to cook a freaking banquet for her and I just found out I'm terrible at the cooking minigames. I'm not sure how high your cooking skill is here, but if possible, would you mind coming over to help? (I'm at Asuna's house in Selmburg, on the 61st Floor- it's got white walls and is pretty big, you can't miss it. Furthermore, I'll compensate you for your time, so don't worry about that.)_

_-Kirito_

Still not saying anything yet, Klein pulled up the menu to check out his skill level in that field. He found it to be in the low 400s- nowhere near the maxed-out number of 1000, but nowhere near zero, either. Maybe better than Kirito, maybe not, but either way, it sounded like he'd appreciate the help.

That was when Klein finally decided to address his guildmates about the situation. "Guys, I hate to do this on such short notice, but do you mind if I go see a friend for an hour or two?"

Dale, one of his guild members, responded with "Well, why the heck would he message you on such short notice? Doesn't seem like that good a friend."

Klein didn't even bat an eye. "Girlfriend issues."

A collective "Oh," came from the rest of the guild members. Every single one of them either had had girl problems at some point or another or at least knew someone that did. Those problems usually came out of nowhere and went south fast.

"I don't think that'll be much of a problem," Kunimittz, another guild member, said. "Just don't be gone for long, okay?"

"I'll be back before you know it," Klein said. Following that, he took out one of the increasingly-valuable Teleport Crystals from his inventory (he probably needed to stock up on those again, he only had two left, not counting this one), wandered a few feet away from the others, and held the crystal up.

"Teleport, Selmburg!"

Klein disappeared in a flash of blue light, leaving his guildmates behind.

* * *

Kirito was getting desperate.

Klein had messaged him twenty minutes ago saying that he'd arrived in Selmburg and was on his way, but he still wasn't here and Asuna's return wasn't getting any further away. Thus, he'd tried to make the second dish, which was some kind of salad. Thankfully, it didn't involve any cooking, so at least he couldn't burn it, but that didn't stop him from making a lot of mistakes. From shredding the lettuce so fine it was almost impossible to pick up with a fork to adding _way_ too much salt and pepper, Kirito knew that any more attempts at making food without help were probably ill-advised.

Finally, he heard knocking on the front door. Without looking up, he yelled, "It's open!"

When the door swung open, Kirito looked up as Klein entered the room. "Hey, Klein. Nice to see you again."

Klein didn't respond. His mouth was hanging wide open as he stared at, well, everything. Kirito had never visited Klein's place before, but judging by the look he had in his face, it was nowhere near as luxurious as Asuna's was.

"Holy crap, Kirito," Klein said, "Asuna must be loaded! Do you know how much this place cost?"

"From what I heard, around four million," Kirito responded.

" _Four million col,"_ Klein said with obvious envy. "I knew being in the Knights of the Blood Oath could be a lucrative job if you're in a position like Asuna's, but this is insane!"

Kirito smiled. "I know, right? Look, I get that you're admiring the house, but would you mind coming over here to help me make some dinner? As evidenced by my first two dishes-" he pointed at the sludge masquerading as soup and the mess of a salad he'd made so far- "Preparing food isn't my strong suit."

"Well, you can't be good at everything," Klein said. "So, what's the next dish on the list?"

"Meatballs and peppers," Kirito said.

"That shouldn't be too bad," Klein said. "I've made that before. I'll focus on that, you can start on whatever the next dish is."

Before either of them could start their respective tasks, however, a loud beep shattered the silence as a message popped up in Kirito's inbox. He took a few seconds to open and read it, but once he was done, it felt like his heart had plunged down an elevator shaft.

_The meeting went by a lot quicker than I expected. I'll be back in twenty. Can't wait to see what you made for me!_

_-Asuna_

"Oh, no," Kirito stammered. "We only have twenty minutes to make everything on this list. Is that even possible?"

Klein scanned the list himself before giving an affirmative nod. "It'll be tight, but we can probably do it if we move fast. Here, I'll start the meatballs, you can do the sushi! We've got twenty minutes, let's go, let's go, let's go!"

The two of them began rummaging through the shelves, pulling out anything in their way whether they needed it or not. When they finally assembled the ingredients and started their respective minigames, they began to rush through them as fast as possible, Klein's fingers flying as he created malformed meatballs while Kirito assembled lopsided pieces of sushi, drizzling soy sauce over everything.

"Keep going," Klein said after Kirito finished making the sushi. "I'll worry about the meatballs and peppers, you start on the next meal!"

"On it!"

Seconds seemed to fly by as Kirito snatched everything he needed off the counter before hurriedly assembling it to do the same thing as before.

If he wanted to finish everything in time for Asuna's return, every second counted.

* * *

The meeting, while short, had been a massive drain on Asuna.

Trying to negotiate with the Divine Dragon Alliance often felt like trying to defeat a Floor Boss blindfolded- you _could_ theoretically do it but you'd have to be crazy to try. Sure, they had to send people who weren't currently on the front lines to the meeting, so most of the people there didn't quite have the pretentious air about them that their leaders had, but stubbornness had already been instilled in them. Every inch they gave felt more like a mile with all the effort it took, and with everything that had happened in the game recently, they needed to get quite a few inches out of them if the next dungeon was to go even remotely smoothly.

Her exhaustion had been pretty obvious while she was staggering through Selmburg to return to her house- after appearing on the teleportation pad in the center of town, while quite a few people either waved to her or said hello, she could barely muster the energy to wave back.

After a fifteen-minute walk through town, she finally managed to reach her house. She would have knocked on the door to ask Kirito to let her in, but the first thing she noticed was that the door was already open a crack.

Asuna tensed. The orange guilds that were the scourge of most players, including Laughing Coffin, tended to go after players themselves rather than their residences (since players usually carried just about everything on them), but there were still people who would try for a good old-fashioned breaking and entering. While the town was a safe zone (meaning you couldn't kill any would-be robbers you found in your house), that didn't stop Asuna from drawing her rapier and preparing to attack the intruder anyway.

"Wait," she thought to herself. "What if they were after Kirito? Maybe they kidnapped him while I was gone!"

She called out, "Kirito? Everything okay in there?"

No answer.

She called out again. Still no answer.

Without another word, Asuna charged through the door with a battle cry, only for it to die halfway out of her mouth when she realized that the people in her house didn't look like they were there to rob her. Instead, they consisted merely of Kirito and a man whom she didn't recognize, their clothing covered with stains and looks of exhaustion on their faces.

Kirito and the other man saw Asuna at the same time, and both of them proceeded to cringe like they expected her to stab them anyway.

Then Asuna was hit with the smell, which was a _special_ kind of awful. It didn't just smell like badly-made food. Asuna wouldn't have been surprised if the room was filled with literal garbage. And when she glanced at the table, garbage was just about the only word that came to mind to describe it.

At the left end, a bed of what looked like green flecks topped with dirt sat next to a roll of malformed sushi that was beginning to fall apart, with a plate of limp, colorless pasta lying in front of it. Further right rested globs of indistinguishable meat with rubbery-looking peppers, a bowl of something murky and thick that might have passed for soup three hours ago, and several more limp brown blobs that were probably supposed to be dumplings. And in the center of it all stood a pitcher, tall and proud, filled with some sort of concoction that was a disturbing shade of mottled green and gave off a sickly-sweet smell.

Maybe it was the food, or maybe it was their reactions to her seeing the food, but it took Asuna nearly twenty seconds before she finally mustered the courage to speak up. "Uh, guys? Can one of you explain what's going on here?"

The man she didn't recognize practically exploded at that, speaking so fast that she could barely decipher what he was saying. "Kirito called me over here because you asked her to make like seven different things in a really short time limit…"

Kirito picked up where he left off. "And in case you can't tell by these _masterpieces_ behind me, I'm not very good at the cooking minigames…"

"And we only had two things done by the time you messaged Kirito that you'd be back in twenty…"

"And if I was bad at the games when I had all the time in the world, I was even worse at them when I had to rush through the process…"

"And I'm also pretty confident I put the ingredients of the smoothie in the blender in the wrong order…"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa," Asuna said. "Slow your roll. Before you two shout any more nonsense at me, I have a few questions. First of all, what made you think you had to make seven things for me?"

"You left behind seven recipes," Kirito said. "Isn't it logical to assume that you had to make everything on the list? Otherwise, why bother making it?"

Asuna had to stifle a laugh. "My God, Kirito. That's _not_ what I tried to do with that list at all. I didn't want you to make a buffet that'd last us for days on end, I just wanted to give you some options for what to make! I still don't know you that well yet, so I didn't know if you were a picky eater."

Back in the real world, Kirito ate everything put in front of him. A combination of usually going quite some time between proper meals due to his near-addiction to games and Suguha's cooking always being delicious made anything seem tasty to him. Here was no exception, not that Asuna knew it yet.

However, that wasn't the point here. "Wait, so…"

"Sorry about not making that clearer," Asuna said, cutting her off. "I didn't realize I had to spell everything out for you."

Kirito wasn't having it. "Come on, Asuna. Do you really have to be that condescending?"

"No, I don't. I _want_ to be that condescending, and that's what matters," Asuna said.

Kirito groaned and rolled his eyes. "Why do you have to be this way?"

"Because I just got through one of the most grueling meetings I've been to in this entire game, and now I'm probably not even going to get a decent meal to finish off the day unless I make it myself," Asuna said. "Wouldn't that make you a little cranky?"

"Okay, okay, I get it," Kirito said. "Look, I apologize for being so terrible at cooking, but it's just not something I focused on getting skill points in. It's not like I'll be able to kill a Floor Boss by throwing cooked food at it until it drops dead from a heart attack."

"Well, that would be pretty funny if you could, but I doubt Kayaba designed the game with that in mind," Asuna said.

The other man turned to face Kirito. "Uh, is she never going to ask who I am?"

Asuna tried to stammer out an explanation, but Kirito decided to just shut that conversation down before it got too far. "Sorry for never introducing you, Klein. Asuna, this is Klein. He's the head of Fuurinkazan and was on the front lines until pretty recently. I just asked him for help cooking after I figured out how hopeless I was."

"Somehow, I'm not that surprised," Asuna said. "At my school, all the boys would do _anything_ to impress a girl. Seriously. It got so bad, you'd think that there'd been an outbreak of hanahaki disease on campus or something."

Kirito smiled a little half-smile. "Well, I doubt I impressed you here. Honestly-" he pointed at the dishes on the table- "I'm not that impressed either."

"Actually," Asuna said, "I'm just impressed you went to this much effort to get everything done on time. With the route you went down, I'm surprised it didn't end with me waltzing in on you cooking up whatever monstrosities you were making and only being halfway down the list. Sure, you had to rush like crazy to do this, but you finished. I'm not sure how many other people in this game would have done, well, _this_."

Kirito didn't say anything back, his mouth just hanging open. When he tried to talk, he just stammered. "Uh… I…"

Asuna turned to Klein. "Is that the first time he's ever gotten complimented like that?"

"I don't see him that often, so I'm not really the person to ask here," Klein said. "I have to leave soon, anyway. My guild's probably waiting on me, I can't leave them hanging for much longer."

Kirito managed to calm himself down enough to address this. "No problem. Before you go, though, take this." He pulled up his inventory, scrolling through the list of items before finally coming to a stop on something he found interesting, and then tapped a few buttons before the prompt disappeared.

A few seconds later, a loud beep indicated that Klein had a new message. When he pulled it up, it read, "'Kirito' has gifted you (2) Teleport Crystals and (1000) col. Accept?"

"Consider it your compensation," Kirito said. "And thanks for coming on such short notice."

"You're welcome," Klein said. He accepted Kirito's gift without question, then pulled out one of his menu and yelled, "Teleport, Grundle!" Then, in a flash of blue light, he was gone once more.

Kirito and Asuna stared at each other for a few seconds before either of them could work up the nerve to speak. When Asuna was the first one to break out of that trance, her words were far less harsh than Kirito expected. "Well, you might have totally failed, but this is definitely better than nothing."

"Aw," Kirito said. "Anyway, if we're actually planning on eating any of this stuff, we should get on it, it's probably going to expire soon. It's your dinner, you pick first."

"Wow," Asuna said, chuckling under her breath. "There's so many great choices to pick from. But I guess I'll take the sushi. It doesn't look completely unsalvageable. Plus-" she trailed off for a moment here- "it reminds me of home."

"I guess I'll take the dumplings, then," Kirito said. "What should we do with the rest?"

"Just leave it, it'll clean itself up eventually," Asuna said.

The two of them sat opposite each other at Asuna's well-crafted table, each of them taking their dish and pushing the others aside before tentatively taking their first bites of their food.

"You know what," Asuna said, "All that and this isn't even half bad. I mean, I've had better, but I've had worse, too."

"Same here," Kirito said. "It's not home cooking, but it's passable."

The two of them mulled it over for a few seconds before beginning to laugh out loud. All that stress, all those nightmares, and every terrible thought Kirito had about what Asuna was going to say about this dumpster fire of a meal evaporated. Was it the greatest thing ever? No. But they were enjoying it together.

And at the moment, that was all that mattered.


End file.
